Starting an Advertising Agency

How to Start an Advertising Agency

Starting your own advertising agency business is not difficult if you have the right aptitude and
the inclination. There are too many options to choose from, start, and run a successful
advertising agency.
Start Your Own Publication:
There are many ways to start your own advertising agency business and one of the most cost
effective methods is to start a small publication with a few articles and publications you
personally wrote.
If you can collect money from the advertisers before starting your publication, you could get
your advertisers to finance your start up needs! Use part of the collected money for printing and
distribution, the remaining balance will be your profit, or you may spend some bucks for your
own advertising.

 Select a name for your publication, the layout and, the logo designs.
 Research for papers and magazines to see who advertises a lot and invite them to place
ads in your publication.
 Contact a few printing companies and compare their prices and offers.
 Make some lists of the number of copies to be distributed in particular areas.
 Plan a good distribution strategy, including distribution in public places like cinema halls,
malls, parks, door-to-door delivery, in the streets etc.
 Estimate the cost of distributing the publication, have some workers to distribute them
and compute their compensation based on your planned budget.
 Do a research on how much to charge per advertisement. Make sure your price is
competitive, and also make sure you make profit.
 Offer your advertisers a help with the design and drafting of their advertisements if
necessary and let them know the schedule of the release, where and how many copies,
and make sure that they get a copy of the publication too.

This method has been tested and proven to work many times making several people earn a
decent income working from home. Many big online advertising companies started using the
same way.
Use the Internet to Start You Own Advertising Agency: The Internet has taken marketing,
advertising, and promotion strategies to unprecedented levels, as the reach is astounding. If you
understand the basics of Internet Marketing and have a little background in advertising and
promotion, you can have a very profitable and productive career by starting your own advertising
agency business.
EZines: These are electronic online magazines and are very popular. Ezines usually specialize
and focus in certain specific areas and levels interest. Make sure that the topic is interesting and
people will surely advertise in them, as the cost of advertising is lower as well as having the
potential to reach millions of people online, making it a very powerful advertising tool over the
Internet. So give some thoughts in starting an Ezine website and taking it the first step in starting
your own advertising agency business. There too many options available. Choose the one that
suits your aptitude, skills, experience and budget. Hard work, perseverance, dedication, and
determination will definitely ensure success. Starting an advertising agency business needs
reputation, contacts, and timing. Publications and Ezines are just some stepping stones to start
with, and to build contacts and reputation.
 Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 6:59 pm    Post subject: How To Start An Ad Agency From Home
With No Money Down
Joined: You can also make money by operating your own ad agency from home. Offer businesses
28 May advertising space in YOUR publication. You will run a little publication that contains adverts and
2006
Posts:
if you like, a sprinkling of articles.
1
You take payment from advertisers first before they place their adverts with you. You use part of
this money for printing and distribution costs. The balance of the money is your own profits to
keep. You now arrange distribution of your publication. In this way, you can start and operate a
highly profitable advertising business without spending a single cent. You use the finances of
other people (the advertisers) to float your start up expenses and reap for you a sizable profit on a
daily basis.

Publication Size

Firstly, give a name to your publication. This makes it easily identifiable and it looks professional
too. Now decide on how your publication is going to look and how many pages it will consist of.
It is good to start with three A4 pages. Place these three A4 pages together and fold horizontally
to make an A5 sized publication that has A5 sides. The name of your publication and your
telephone number goes on the top first page. Decide on the area you will distribute these
publications. Put the name of this area next to or immediately below the name of your
publication. At a later stage, you may run same named publications but in different areas.

Decide on the number of copies of your publication you wish to distribute in a specific area. The
more you plan to distribute, the happier your advertisers will feel about advertising with you.
This is because the more copies you distribute, the greater amount of people will read the adverts
and hence more exposure and business is possible for your advertiser. Try and visit at least three
printers and get printing quotes on printing your publication.

Distribution

You can use various methods to distribute your publications like handing them out at street
corners to passing pedestrians and motorists, at busy malls, at community centers and door to
door in neighborhoods.

Work out the cost to distribute each copy of your publication. You may need to employ school
kids or part-time workers to do the distribution for you. Decide on what to pay them. Three cents
per publication correctly delivered is a very fair price. Do random checks to ensure that these are
delivered to your requirements. This method is the most effective method from a cost point of
view and it works the best. The amount per copy you decide to pay is your distribution costs.

Charging Advertisers

In order to calculate a fair price to charge advertisers, ensuring you have a sizable profit for your
time and trouble, you’ll have to work backwards.

The costs you have so far are printing costs and distribution costs (including fuel costs and
sundries if applicable). Adding these two together will give you a total of all costs you will ever
get. This represents the total operating costs to you. Calculate one third of the total operating
costs. This figure that you get represents your profit that you keep for yourself. Add this profit
 figure to your total operating costs figure. The amount you get represents the total amount of
money you need to get from total advertisers’ fees that you have to charge. Divide this amount by
the number of page sides (twelve A5 sides if you choose the size mentioned earlier).This figure
will give you the cost of advertising space for one A5 side of your publication. Divide this figure
by four and the new figure that you get will give you the cost of ¼ (one quarter) page of
advertising fee in your publication. You will base your advertising fees on this figure per quarter
page of advertising space. As an incentive for advertisers to book more space in your publication,
you can give discounts on larger spots taken.

Remember advertisers pay you first, then their advert appears. This money received from
advertisers is pooled together and used to finance operating costs and your very own profit. You
can therefore start and operate this business with no capital whatsoever.

How To Get Advertisers

Get hold of newspapers on a regular basis. Jot down details of small businesses or individuals
advertising in the classifieds. Check this newspaper on different days and cross check with the
list you have already drawn up. Once you find adverts appearing more than once, tick these off
on your list. Contact these people and offer your advertising services.

Collect Adverts And Prepare

The last stage is to collect adverts from advertisers, collect payments and hand over adverts to
your printers. Explain the setting up of your publication to your printer, who’ll do the layout and
typesetting for you. Once the entire publication is typeset, check for any errors and if happy
commence with printing. Some customers may have fancy logos which can easily be scanned
onto your publication.

You may find that you will have to assist some advertisers with the drafting and preparation of
their adverts. Do this for them as part of the service. It is important to create a deadline for taking
in adverts. If you find you have some space left, allow a few extra days making sure you don’t
run behind schedule.

Notify advertisers when publications will be ready and when, how and where they will be
distributed. Give the advertiser a publication for his own records.

Once publications are ready, commence with distribution as planned.

Conclusion

The first time you do this may seem a bit taxing but the second time round will be a breeze as
more advertisers gain confidence in you, your business and your abilities. As we found in our
second time, we had so many advertisers that space was booked in two days! We had to put off
the rest till the following week.

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